Which brings me to today, Poetry Friday. Please visit globe-trotting Sylvia at Poetry for Children for Roundup!

My offering is Part 6 of Alexie's 7-part poem "Inside Dachau" It's powerful in its straightforward simplicity, and it's helping me to find my own words as I attempt to write about how I, a white 21st century American woman, relate to to these (and other) holocausts.

Monday, August 24, 2015

All summer we've been watching movies with our 15 year old -- classics, Oscar winners, personal favorites. It's been a cultural experience! And it's been hugely inspiring. And gratifying. I mean, what joy to share with someone you love a piece of art you love! And how wonderful to revisit, after so long?

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

I'm excited to share with you today two books by Alabama poets who have been writing for decades! And neither is afraid to write about old age or old poets or what life is like in their current chapter.

Isn't that marvelous? I hope to be just like them someday.

So, first, from Betty Spence, a lovely Mobile poet I've been lucky enough to meet a few time and publish in Birmingham Arts Journal: TRACES OF PRESENCE by Betty Spence . Here's one of my favorite poems in the book:

The Richer for It- after May Sarton, "Coming into Eighty"

I think I shall live to be eighty-something --
I've seen how loath old poets are to leave.
stick-figures in wind-puffed sleeves
staring down an ocean of words unsaid
languishing for want of naming things
to others and themselves.

I've seen them piping like shore birds
on finding half-buried in the sand
a bottle thrown into a river at flood stage,
a bottle, for all I know, bearing the words:
Write the vision, make it plain.

For all the times time has hurried me
I think I shall live to worry time along.
Already half-past the wakefulness of noon,
I'd like to live to sleep-in, sleep off poems,
live until lines in my face story forth,

love long enough to give away whatever
to whomever I please and be the richer for it.
I'll say goodbye but once -- and that at the gate.
You can, if you like, watch me out of sight.

-- Betty Spence
............

Next, the latest book offering from our current Alabama Poet Laureate, Andrew Glaze, who is still writing in his 90s! (And to think, I wrote a poem for him entitled "I Want to be Eighty-Five," and here he is a decade later, still naming things and chasing down words.)

His new book, OVERHEARD IN A DRUGSTORE by Andrew Glaze includes a poem he wrote for me called "Climbing the Sky," and it makes me feel so tender and grateful that I can hardly talk about it (though I did try at the release event this past Sunday -- see pic below of me and Andy!). But there's another poem on the theme that I'd like to share with you today.

Old Poet

Clouds don't come at him any more
seething inside with green fire nor
does the skin of lovers often proclaim,
like a trumpet, fearful surprises.
And where are the river-roads that once he attended,
the quarrels that whistled around him like bullets,
the streaming tracks that swept him along come midnight
with the gift of a single mountain lantern?

Wherefrom are the words that used to hurt,
that hurt now twice as often, --
and were are the friends he loved enough to wish
he might give them a bit of his time on earth.
Also, old man, why can't left encounter right
anymore for a battle?
And where are the rattling snare drums of daylight?

Why do there not canter up these days
poems that stamp the hoof,
and offer the bridle, so he must clamber top-side
the saddle, and set himself to thunder off,
not caring to guess where the gallop goes,
or by what fork of the road,
or by what fork of the road.

- Andrew Glaze------------------------------
and finally, May Sarton's title poem from her book COMING INTO EIGHTY:

Coming into Eighty

Coming into eighty
I slow my ship down
For a safe landing.
It has been battered,
One sail torn, the rudder
Sometimes wobbly.
We are hardly a glorious sight.
It has been a long voyage
Through time, travail and triumph,
Eighty years
Of learning what to be
And how to become it.

One day the ship will decompose
And then what will become of me?
Only a breath
Gone into nothingness
Alone
Or a spirit of air and fire
Set free?
Who knows?

Greet us at landfall
The old ship and me,
But we can’t stay anchored.
Soon we must set sail
On the last mysterious voyage
Everybody takes
Toward death.
Without my ship there,
Wish me well.

Friday, August 7, 2015

This past week I read a fascinating book called DANCERS ON DANCING, edited by Cynthia Lyle. It's an out-of-print book (1979), and it includes exclusive interviews with ballet dancers, modern dancers, and choreographers. I learned so much about the dancing world! Dancer go into the profession like any other athlete - knowing their dancing time is limited. And basically to be a dancer is to be someone who experiences pain -- and dances through the pain. I'm interested to find out where these dancers are now, 30+ years later.

Throughout the book I was reminded again of how all art is essentially the same. Today I'd like to share quotes from the book the resonated with the writer in me... and then I'll share a dance poem!

When things aren't going so well...
"The only solution is to find a way to get back into my dancing, just to do that as well as I can and enjoy it. Then I'm all right again. Then I can keep going. There are always friends saying, "You know, you really should be doing this role. Why aren't you doing it?" And sometimes I start to think, "Yes, I should be doing it." But I'm not doing it. And I can get so confused by what I want and don't have that I forget what I do have. That isn't everything, but it's good enough."
- Martine van Hamel

On moodiness...
"Dancers are very neurotic people. We are either depressed or very happy. We are always at either one extreme or the other. Frustration before I get onstage often brings out frustration onstage. We like to dance; when we don't dance, we get depressed. If we do a bad performance, it's hard to forget. We are always striving for perfection, which we know we will never attain. A dancer is a creature of moods. The happiest times for me are when I'm performing."
- Ted Kivitt

On strengths and weaknesses...
"I have a very soft and limber back, which makes it very difficult to pirouette. I always have trouble with pirouettes; it's my biggest hangup. But since I passed thirty, I look at it in a different way. I don't dream about doing ten pirouettes because I'm not capable of doing that many. I have learned to accept both my strongest and my weakest points. My strongest point is that I have a very good sustained elevation for jumping, which for a male dancer is very important. I try not to show off. Instead of trying to do eight pirouettes I do three, but I try to make them very clean and very definite. I work on my weak points, but I don't take chances and I don't get mad. I know my limitations and I try to work with them, not to resent them."
- Ivan Nagy

On criticism....
"One thing an artist can't do is judge himself or herself objectively. It's impossible -- mirrors and pictures don't do it for you. Somebody else has to judge you. And then it has to be a great eye to do you justice, to do the most for you by criticizing you, by keeping you in your place and yet challenging you too.... You struggle to improve them every day and to assert what is already good. It's a process that never ends. I personally think it's the only way of existing."
- Violette Verdy

found at www.quotegarden.com

On competitiveness....
"I think it is healthy to be competitive with yourself, but not against each other."
- Arthur Mitchell

On finding your purpose...
"There's a period that dancers have to go through, I think, in which you just have to get out on stage and try anything, because the way you should move hasn't crystallized yet."
-Judith Jamison

On advice for young dancers...
"I go into colleges and tell them all to forget it, because I think that a little discouragement is the most I can do to help them. They should know what they're getting into. And I've always believed that unless somebody really has a very big need to dance and feels absolutely driven and has some kind of a real dream about it, he shouldn't take up people's time.... So I think it's best to tell them the worst."
- Paul Taylor

On the role of the critic...
"The critics should build audiences; instead they destroy them by writing disparaging reviews with a narrow outlook. It's very serious, when your economics depends on your audiences."
-Murray Louis

On fame...
"For me, I've done the work. That's enough. What I feel is enough. I don't like getting the applause and adulation."
-Anna Sokolow

On why we love what we love...
"You hear a piece of music, and you've never heard anything quite like it. But you're drawn to it. Why? Because you sense the truth in it. The same in painting. Art presents the truth in many ways."
-Anna Sokolow

On where art comes from...
"All these dances come from my stomach - that is the creation point. I don't understand why dancers call one piece "Flower," the next dance "Storm," the next dance "Untitled." If there is only one creation point, and from that all dances come, why they have to make up other titles with their minds? That's very stupid to me. That is like decorating."
-Kei Takei

----------------------------
Now for my single, solitary dance poem! It's from a series of historical women poems I wrote and is included in my book of poems THE COLOR OF LOST ROOMS.

Audrey Hepburn at the Dance Studio

Born for arabesque and cabriole,
I could not pirouette my way
through the occupation, could only
perform in my mind pique turns
and side leaps while I scratched
dirt with fingers, unearthed
tulip bulbs and ground them
to flour. Between loaves
my bones began to wither
and crack, hunger dissolving
the fine arches of my feet,
the graceful curve of calf.
When the war ended I stumbled
into a different dream.
And for all it’s given me
and all I’ve become, I’d trade it
for this mirror, this bar,
one night on some great stage,
my body fluid as sunlight
breaking over a field of wheat.

Monday, August 3, 2015

Back in January I selected "wild" as my One Little Word for 2015. This whole year so far I've really been focused on "returning to a natural state." This has meant a lot of time alone (thinking, pondering, allowing myself to be the quiet, introverted soul I am) as well as time adventuring and trying new things.

This past week I was able to both adventure and return to my natural state when I visited with two of my writing friends the islands of Chincoteague and Assateague for the annual Pony Penning Week. This is something I've wanted to do ever since wee horse-loving me read the books by Maguerite Henry. How many times over the years have I dreamed myself on those islands?! And this year, I DID IT.

Not only were we able to get up close and personal with the ponies in their pens (awaiting the annual Pony Swim), we also got to see one lone stallion Rainbow Warrior who by chance or firemen's choice (not sure which), was left on the island.

Here are some friends feasting on hay. One thing I learned was that the ponies' bloated look is due to the vast amount of salt in their diets. They drink twice as much water as regular ponies to help compensate!

...a view through the slats of one of the foals to be auctioned off. (No, I didn't buy one! But that was a dream of mine when I was younger!)

If I had bought one, it might have been this one: (by the way, see that "12" brand on her mother's flank? That indicates the year she first came in for roundup.)

And here is Rainbow Warrior, in all his solitary glory... story is (according to Captain Dan, who took us on an amazing sunset cruise around the island), he lost his mares to a younger male, and since then, he's been on his own. He looked pretty content with no worries about other stallions while all the others were penned up. :) Thanks, Sheila, for the great pic!

One of the treasures I brought home from the trip was this gorgeous photography book IN THE HERD by Jayne M. Silberman (who signed a book for me!). What a gorgeous keepsake. And now I shall write some pony poems....

And finally, here we all are in front of the paddocks. Great trip, ladies. Thank you!

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Words to Live By

"Err on the side of love." - my Mama

"Life isn't about finding yourself.Life is about creating yourself."- Anonymous

“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love,and love what you write.The key word is love.You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.”- Ray Bradbury